Pine Cone

Goats in the City; Loons in Congress

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This idiot thinks he’s Rosa Parks

Reprinted from The Carmel Pine Cone, September 20, 2013

Imagine for a moment that the Carmel City Council embraced a sustainable lifestyle.

Now imagine that, in furtherance of its progressive ideals, the City Council adopted an ordinance that allows homeowners in the city’s residential district to keep up to four goats on their property.

Goats are hearty and useful livestock. They keep the weeds down while providing nanny milk and bleat meat.

What’s more, the Carmel council opened the barn door for such uses earlier this year when it sanctioned the city’s burgeoning hen population.

Unlike the two-chickens-in-every-home ordinance, however, we can easily imagine that a similar goat law would generate significant opposition from among non-progressive and unsustainable citizens who prefer driving to Trader Joe’s for their goat milk. Also, goats are noisy varmints and they attract flies the size of B-52s.

Despite the outcry, imagine that the City Council adopts the goat ordinance on a split vote. Two of the council members strenuously object, saying that the current retail goat system already serves the public adequately, even if the cost of goats and goat milk are spiraling out of control.

Needy people who live in the Carmel ghettoes are thrilled that the ordinance passed because they now face a future in which goat milk will no longer bankrupt them. So many of them have done without goat milk for so long that their health now suffers, but they will now be able to invest in their own low-cost goats.

Now let’s imagine that the council members on the short end of the goat vote are sore losers. Worse, the losers are raving maniacs who had, prior to the vote, generated a ranting disinformation campaign to whip up the throbbing jaundice from among their goat-hating constituents.

So the losers now take to the airwaves. They whip up their mumbling minions at the think tanks, they whine to the Supreme Court, and they refuse to take yes for an answer.

They are consumed by goats. In fact, they are hysterical to the point of distraction.They don’t believe it’s government’s job to allow people to have goats. They will fulminate in full throat, all the while misappropriating vague references from the U.S. Constitution and the Bible to support their arguments. They will tell everyone that the one-size-fits-all goat ordinance threatens upheaval to corporate goat ranchers. Better yet, the goat ranchers will funnel money into the losers’ campaign operations.

At every council meeting, the losers petulantly introduce new ordinances that would overturn the goat law. Their ordinances are rejected, of course, but that doesn’t stop the losers from introducing new anti-goat ordinances. One of the losers compares himself to Rosa Parks.

The council agenda is soon jammed with no-goat resolutions that don’t have a chance in hell of passing. But it doesn’t matter to the losers. As far as they are concerned, the governance of Carmel is all about forcing useless votes on the goat thing.

They have by now become useless dingbats, a disgrace to the principals of Carmel democracy and an embarrassment to the rest of Monterey County.

And when it comes time to pass a municipal budget, the losers cynically manipulate the budget ordinance so that any vote to keep City Hall open will repeal the goat ordinance.

Because the people of Carmel are alert and they take pride in their community, they would have no tolerance for such nitwittery. The losers would be led away in straitjackets.

Fortunately, the folks in Carmel will never have to deal with such an outrageous scenario.

In Washington, D.C., Republicans in Congress have forced at least 41 votes to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, and they are now threatening to crash government by forcing provisions to defund the act in the continuing resolution to fund government at sequester levels.

The folks who elected these people apparently have a higher tolerance for petulant losers than we do in Carmel.

           

            

An Exclusive, A Clarification, An Edification & A Correction

Rube Furrow Journalism, News, Pine Cone, Society, Uncategorized ,

 Reprinted from The Carmel Pine Cone, September 12, 2013

A Santa Lechuga Expectorator Exclusive: Joe Schmuck has filed divorce papers in the Monterey County Courthouse, ending his high-profile marriage of 20 years to Mary Schmuck.

Sources close to the Pebble Beach couple cited “irreconcilable differences” that developed after Mrs. Schmuck hired a man named “Carlos” as the family pool boy. The Schmucks were married in 1989 in a lavish ceremony at Willows by-the-Bay Church. Newspaper articles at the time described the wedding as the “social event of the year.”

It was Mr. Schmuck’s eighth marriage, and the third for Mrs. Schmuck.

Friends say they feared that the Schmuck marriage was in danger after Carlos was hired, inasmuch as there is no pool at the Schmuck estate.

Clarification: Mary Schmuck has filed formal separation papers in the Monterey County Courthouse against her husband, Joe Schmuck.

Sources say Mrs. Schmuck submitted the legal papers as a simple tax dodge, and that the Schmuck union remains as strong as ever.

The Carmel Valley couple was married by Baba Ram Dass at Monastery Beach during an expansive gathering of friends in 2000. It was the first marriage for both. Their pet ferret, named Willows, served as ring bearer during the ceremony. Newspaper articles at the time referred to the wedding as the “cosmic event of the year.”

Rumors that Mrs. Schmuck hired Carlos as a pool boy are unfounded, and close friends say that Carlos is actually the family’s live-in mechanic.

Rectification: Joe and Mary Schmuck have mutually agreed to seek counseling, according to sources close to the family.

The sources say that the demands of business travel have created a strain in the Schmucks’ relationship, but both are amenable to marriage counseling. Mr. Schmuck is a noted performance artist who is on the road for months at a time.  Mrs. Schmuck owns and operates a car wash, which serves as the couple’s tax dodge.

The couple was joined in marriage in 1993, during a modest ceremony performed in the willow-shaded back yard of their modest Monterey home by a Reformed Methodist minister. The wedding was witnessed by about two dozen of the couple’s closest friends and family members, and newspapers completely ignored the ceremony.

Previous reports that Carlos is the family mechanic are incorrect. Sources say he is assistant manager at the car wash and that he is happily married, with three young children of his own.

Correction: Neither Joe Schmuck nor his longtime girlfriend Mary Klondike are seeking a divorce, according to sources. While Mr. Schmuck and Ms. Klondike have been “committed life partners” for the past 12 years, they have never been married, either to one another or to anyone else.

Sources say the Prunedale couple does in fact own a pool, but Joe Schmuck does all pool maintenance by himself. What’s more, all service work on the Schmuck-Klondike automobiles is performed at the dealership by a mechanic named “Bubba.”

Neither Mr. Schmuck nor Ms. Klondike owns a car wash. And Mr. Schmuck is not a performance artist, but has been a freelance consultant, specializing in actuarial work, for the past three decades.

Also, Carlos is the name of the couple’s 8-year-old son. Willows is the name of the couple’s rescue bulldog, and is not a ferret.

Responding to earlier reports that the Schmucks were seeking a divorce in order to perpetrate a “tax dodge,” a CPA who identified himself as the owner of a local drive-through tax service franchise told The Expectorator that both Mr. Schmuck and Ms. Klondike have never had issues with the Internal Revenue Service and in fact purposely contribute extra every year “so that they can do their small part in paying down the government debt.”

A Follow-up Expectorator Exclusive: An attorney representing Mr. Schmuck and Ms. Klondike announced today that the couple is currently contemplating a defamation lawsuit.

In related news, The Expectorator has agreed to a cease-and-desist order forbidding the column from publishing future exclusives, clarifications, rectifications or corrections about the couple.